How To Hire Top Sales Talent

Can You Justify Hiring Top Sales Talent?
Hiring top talent is difficult and expensive. Is it justified? Can you afford it? Usually the answers are a resounding “yes”.  Consider the familiar 80/20 rule that 20% of the Sales Professionals in a company generate 80% of the sales. Of course, the actual percentages vary based on market, employees, etc., but the concept is consistently valid: A small percentage of the sales team consistently generates most of the sales. Accordingly, increasing the percentage of highly productive Sales Executives and/or Sales Managers, even incrementally, will have a significant positive impact on your revenue and profit. In addition, the cost of replacing a bad hire is very high. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that a bad hire  costs one third of the employee’s annual compensation and the Society for Human Resources (SHRM) estimates this cost at up to five times annual compensation. These are strong justifications for hiring top talent and for improving your recruiting and hiring processes in order to do so.

Recruiting Hints From CNI Recruiting
The following are some recruiting hints from the CNI Recruiting team that you can use to hire top talent:

• • Job descriptions should include information that differentiates your company, i.e. awards that your company has received.
  • Prepare candidate questionnaires that are customized for each job and include questions based on the job requirements.
  • Job applications should require that candidates list all prior jobs and sales vs. quotas for the last full year for each job.
  • Perform multiple phone and in-person interviews.
  • Confirm information included in resumes and applications during candidate interviews.
  • Request and evaluate work samples, i.e. sales communications and proposals.
  • Have candidates “sell” you their current product or service.
  • Review W-2’s or other  documents to confirm compensation.
  • Grade candidates on the following criteria: Skill set, job tenure, past performance, cultural fit, and experience.  Past performance is the most important criterion because it is the best indicator of future performance and for sales professionals it can be measured objectively by reviewing historical sales vs quotas.
  • Job tenures should be reviewed including months as well as years for job start and end dates.
  • Successes and challenges, relationships with supervisors and peers, and reasons for leaving should be discussed in detail with candidates.
  • Interviewers should ask probing questions jobs in order to obtain an accurate picture of candidates. Candidate answers to questions should lead to additional questions by interviewers. Some follow up questions can be as simple as “Why?” or “Can you tell me more about that?”

CNI Recruiting
Hiring top talent takes time and effort and Hiring Managers often feel that they don’t have the time for effective recruiting because of their operational responsibilities. Also, they often feel that they are “buried in resumes”.  CNI Recruiting significantly reduces recruiting time and effort and increases the percentage of good hires by carefully evaluating candidates vs. job, cultural and budget requirements and referring only qualified candidates.

CNI Recruiting provides world-class recruiting for only 10% of candidate first year base salary. In addition we offer a market leading guarantee in the event of resignation or termination for any reason within 120 days from date of hire. We are based in New Jersey and recruit throughout the U.S. for Sales, Marketing, IT and Operations professionals. We know how to hire top talent and we achieve the right match between our clients and candidates on a timely basis even in this difficult labor market. 

If you require assistance in achieving your recruiting goals, or have questions or comments about this article, or recruiting in general, please email us at [email protected] or call (908) 874-6148  today…we will exceed your expectations.

Fred Neufeld
President
CNI Recruiting
[email protected]
(908) 874-6148

CNI Recruiting is the parent company of Best Recruiting.

www.cnirecruiting.com